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How to die a graceful death? (By Late Shri Champat Rāi Jain, Bar-at-law)
The one undertaking or business of the sādhu is the overthrow of death, which is held in the utmost dread by the generality of mankind. The sādhu aims at its destruction from the very commencement. nay, he cannot be said to have any other aim or ambition in life than the mastery of this most dreaded of foes. He gave up all undertakings and occupations on the eighth step (pratimā) of the householder's path distributed and gave away all his possessions, excepting a few wearing apparel, on the ninth step, renounced all concern with worldly matters on the tenth step and dissociated himself with all else except the strip of a langoti, the feather whisk and the bowl on the eleventh. The langoți, too, is gone now ! In a word he has no earthly ambitions and pursuits left to obsess his mind as a sannyāsi. Personal comforts he no longer seeks, for he has his body completely under control, having risen even above the automatism of bodily functions, such as excretion, urination and the like, to a very great extent. He enjoys the bliss appertaining to his real nature now all the time, that he can remain absorbed in the samādhi (undisturbed attitude) of Self contemplation, but he knows that the happiness, he thus enjoys, is but a shadow of the real thing, though enrapturing eveny as such. He longs to remove the cause which stands in the way of his enjoyment of real bliss. With respect to knowledge also, he knows that there are infinitely greater treasures in the soul than he is able to avail himself of in his present state, and he